Saturday, May 21, 2016

baksheesh \bak-SHEESH\, noun:

1. A gratuity, present or tip.

2. A gratuity, tip, or bribe paid to expedite service.

verb:

1. To give a tip.

Baksheesh originally was a common term for a tip in Near Eastern countries such as India and Egypt. The Persian bakhshish, "gift," derives from the verb bakhshidan, "to give."

 

sticker shock

• A condition resulting from seeing the total price of a bunch of items and realizing the damage is much greater than you originally expected. May cause a person to have second thoughts about the purchase.

I wanted to book your mom for 7 days of her "services," but when I realized the total came to $21, I got major sticker shock and decided to bail out.

Holiday

• Armed Forces Day
  

History

• Clara Barton: founded the American Red Cross (1881)
• Pagliacci: Leoncavallo's opera debuted in Milan (1892)
• Leopold and Loeb: two teenagers attempt to commit the perfect crime when they murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks (1924)
• The Spirit of St. Louis: one-seater plane touched down as Charles Lindbergh completed the first solo non-stop transatlantic flight (1927); Amelia Earhart became the first woman to perform the same feat (1932)
• Hydrogen bomb: first aerial detonation took place over Bikini atoll (1956)
• Rajiv Gandhi: former Indian prime minister was assassinated while running for reelection (1991)
• Susan Lucci: won her first Daytime Emmy award for Best Actress in the 19th consecutive year she was nominated (1999)

Birthdays

• Plato 427 B.C.
• Albrecht Durer 1471
• Philip II (Spain) 1527
• Alexander Pope 1688
• Glenn Hammond Curtiss 1878
• Armand Hammer 1898
• Horace Heidt 1901
• Fats Waller 1904
• Robert Montgomery 1904
• Sister Maria Innocentia Hummel 1909
• Harold Robbins 1916
• Dennis Day 1917
• Raymond Burr 1917
• Anthony Steel 1920
• Andrei Sakharov 1921 - Soviet physicist, he came to be regarded as the father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, Soviet antiwar activist
• Ara Parseghian 1923
• Peggy Cass 1924
• Ed Fitz Gerald 1924 
• Robert Creeley 1926
• Rick Jason 1926
• Tommy Bryant 1930
• David Groh 1939
• Heinz Holliger 1939
• Ronald Isley (The Isley Brothers) 1941
• Hilton Valentine (The Animals) 1943
• Janet Daily 1944
• Marcie Blane 1944
• Richard Hatch 1946
• Bill Champlin (Chicago) 1947
• Leo Sayer 1948
• Carol Potter 1948
• Mr. T (Lawrence Tero Tureaud) 1952
• Stan Lynch (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers) 1955
• Judge Reinhold 1957
• Lisa Edelstein 1968 - Actress
• Christian McBride 1972
• Notiorious B.I.G. (Christopher George Latore Wallace) 1972
• Fairuza Balk 1974